Hi,

2010/2/22 Michael Fellinger <redmine / ruby-lang.org>:
> I still don't understand the reasons to fork Oniguruma, why would a fork provide less features than the original?

I think that the "fork" is not a right word in this case.

Oniguruma has not only one regexp.  It has language flavors (configura-
tions) to allow each language to select an enabled set of features.
And, Oniguruma's Ruby flavor just disabled ONIG_OPTION_CAPTURE_GROUP.
For another example, Oniguruma itself supports the \Q\E feature for Perl
flavor.  Ruby flavor disables \Q\E too.

The reason why Ruby flavor disabled ONIG_OPTION_CAPTURE_GROUP seems:

  - ONIG_OPTION_CAPTURE_GROUP is not easy to understand (even Kosako said)
  - using both named and unnamed capture at the time is considered as bad
    and confusing style in Ruby
  - when it was discussed, there was no compatibility issue because there
    was no oniguruma gem

It was better for oniguruma gem to disable ONIG_OPTION_CAPTURE_GROUP as
long as it quotes 1.9.  Otherwise, it had to explicitly state "the gem
should not be used as 1.9-compat layer, but a wrapper for Oniguruma."

-- 
Yusuke ENDOH <mame / tsg.ne.jp>